Flawed Words of Power spells

[hogarth]

There are a number of threads that discuss the best Words of Power spells (this one, for instance), but I haven't noticed any threads discussing which words to stay away from.

Here's a few duds that I've found. Prove me wrong!

Dimensional Shift: When I first saw it, it looked kind of like the spell Plane Shift except it only works on willing targets. But when I took another look at it, I realised that by default it only works on the caster; in order to get it to work on multiple targets, you need to boost the target word and raise the spell level by 3 (making it an 8th level spell for clerics and a 10th level spell for wizards). I guess it could be useful for an emergency escape, but it's pretty crummy compared to Plane Shift or the wordspell Dimensional Gate.

Force Block: A +1 armor bonus that lasts for one round. I'm hard-pressed to think of who would ever cast this (either as a standard action or as an immediate action); armor bonuses just aren't that rare.

Sense Hidden: Being able to detect invisible creatures is a huge advantage, but the duration is a killer (concentration, up to minutes/level). At least the boosted version acts like True Seeing which has more out-of-combat uses.

Alignment Aura: This suffers from the same problem as Dimensional Shift -- it works like Holy Aura (et al.), except it can only affect one creature instead of a whole party. Definitely not worth it as an 8th level spell (Resist Arcana + Alignment Shield is almost as good as a 6th level wordspell and lasts 10 times as long).

Rumble: It's like the spell Earthquake, except 1/64 the size and with 1/16 the range! And you can't boost the target key word because that would make it a 10th or 12th level spell.

Special mention goes to the Barrier target word: it allows you to make a wall that's 10' or 20' long per level, but you're still limited to Close range which really restricts the area you can affect.

(Note: I actually like the Words of Power system, so please don't think I'm just being negative!)

[Gilfalas]

I look at it this way. Words of power are a more primordial magic. There is a reason that spellcasting became wizardry and such, it is a refinement of magic to achieve different and in many cases, greater affects.

Some of the words had to be less effective to keep this concept realistic or else magic never would have changed into spellcasting (and the assumed greater effects it brings).

Does that make sense?

[Ahuru Mazda XTREME]

@Gilfalas that makes sense thematically, but that doesn't mean that those words are any good. While flavor is good, I'd prefer that when paizo introduces a system like this (and don't get me wrong, I love this system) that they make it so there isn't anything that is ENTIRELY useless. That's just my 2 cp though.

[hogarth]

You know what? I'm an idiot. The Rumble word I mention with a small Burst area can indeed have its area boosted. For whatever reason, I'm always mixing up "Boosting this effect word increases its level by 2" (what it actually says) with "Boosting this effect word increases the wordspell's level by 2" (how I'm reading it).

So, in fact, you can have a biggish Rumble spell. D'oh!

Gilfalas wrote:

Some of the words had to be less effective to keep this concept realistic or else magic never would have changed into spellcasting (and the assumed greater effects it brings).

Does that make sense?

Personally, I find it easier to imagine that making Dimensional Shift affect only the caster (for instance) was more of an oversight than an intentional flavour change (since the main difference between Dimensional Shift and Plane Shift was subtle enough that I didn't notice it at first), but who can say?